


Locked in a Room

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:50:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Those sharp tones are a harbinger and whatever has caused them will be alien and ugly. It will take something precious and the purchase price of silencing those bells will be brutal death. There is never a night where everybody lives.</i> </p>
<p>After the loss of Owen and Tosh, Ianto tries to look forward to the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locked in a Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Waldo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/gifts).



> Thanks to all the usual suspect(s) for their support. Takes place between "Exit Wounds" and "Children of Earth". Go Team Torchwood Angst!

It’s quiet in the Hub tonight. The snick of keys from Jack’s office blends in with the steady hum of the metal filing drawer latches opening and closing as Ianto catches up on some long-delayed archive updates. It’s quite all over Cardiff these days – a mercy, Ianto thinks gratefully.

They couldn’t handle a major incursion right now.

Jack often speaks of the Rift as a living entity. For all Ianto knows, it is alive in some way. If it is, perhaps this is its penance for allowing Gray safe passage to Cardiff. Equally as likely, though, is that the quiet represents nothing more than a predictable lull in a year of remorseless losses.

The papers in his hands splay, the edges dipping gracefully towards the scarred wooden desktop. This isn’t the first time he’s lost colleagues – friends – because of Torchwood. He’ll carry on. They will carry on, he corrects himself silently. Torchwood will carry on. The end is where they start from.

“I can’t believe we still use paper.” Ianto closes his eyes, a half-smile twitching at the corner of his lips as Jack continues. “With all of the tech we’ve got, I figured us for the only truly paperless office in Wales.”

“Everything is indexed digitally,” Ianto concedes, flicking briskly through the papers in his hands. “But the original paper records often contain bits of information that weren’t translated to the digital medium.”

“Such as?” Jack stands at his elbow, index finger idly tapping against the corner of the desk.

“Such as…” Ianto looks up at him, schooling his face into a mask of sobriety. “The marginal notations of Torchwood agent Alice Guppy in her report on the initial debriefing of one Captain Jack Harkness.”

“I was not debriefed,” Jack retorts. “Not that I didn’t offer, mind you. Care to share these marginal notations?”

Ianto clears his throat, the guttural noise echoing through out the empty space. “The notations are not part of the official record, you understand. Merely Ms. Guppy’s…personal insights into your…” He trails off, not entirely certain how he’s going to complete that statement.

“My?” Jack quirks an eyebrow at him. “My what, Ianto? Charm? Efficiency? Grace under fire?”

“Cock size,” Ianto concludes drily. “Stamina. Speculated ability to withstand inhuman amounts of brutal sexual discipline.”

Jack throws his head back, roaring with laughter. “Oh, wonderful Agent Alice! Never known a more sadistic, deceptive woman in my entire life,” he says, with what sounds to Ianto like real fondness.

“So,” Ianto says crisply, “you have a vast acquaintance with sadistic, deceptive woman and you’ve _ranked_ them?”

“Is the list not in the files?” Jack ripostes with a grin. His hand rests easily on Ianto’s shoulder and the wide grin fades in to a softer smile. “She was a wonderful agent,” he repeats quietly. “Torchwood wasn’t the same without her.”

The room suddenly seems too small, the air too thin. Ianto ‘s hands falter, the papers sliding from his hands. He watches blankly as they spill out across the worn wood. Another Torchwood agent gone – and for all that her death was lifetimes before his birth, he is unsurprised that he feels her loss so keenly. He wishes he knew more about her – about all of the fallen agents whose records he’s sorted and tidied over the past year. He knows the facts of each and every death, the location of their bodies, but he doesn’t know anything about them. No more, he supposes, than he ever know about Tosh and Owen.

She is still here with them, still joined with her living and dead Torchwood brethren in silent solidarity – frozen in time, kept forever from the outside world. Cryogenic stasis is the final fate of all Torchwood agents. All but Owen and Tosh.

All that’s left of them, all of them, are the stark biographical details of forgotten lives left moldering in old filing cabinets. The barest hint of who they were, what they did, sketched out in dates and deeds. He wants so much more than that.

“I’ve worked for so many different Torchwoods,” Jack says softly, hand lazily tracing nonsense patterns across Ianto’s back. “This Torchwood - _your_ Torchwood isn’t the same one Alice sacrificed her life for. Every agent reshapes the agency in their image, Ianto.”

“The death of every agent reshapes the agency.” Ianto corrects him, looking down at the paper remains of a Torchwood agent’s life scattered across the old desk like so much litter.

Jack’s hand squeezes tightly, fingers clawing into the muscles of Ianto’s shoulder. Just as suddenly, the weight of his hand is gone and Ianto hears the sound of a chair scraping across the tiled floor. He tilts his head down, seeing Jack’s boots out of the corner of his eye.

“Ianto,” Jack says softly. “Look at me.”

An alarm rings, a persistent beep that cuts off Jack's words and draws him ineluctably away. There is Rift activity. A month’s worth of peace broken with the ringing of bells.

Those sharp tones are a harbinger and whatever has caused them will be alien and ugly. It will take something precious and the purchase price of silencing those bells will be brutal death. There is never a night where everybody lives.

When he thinks about it later, he will conclude that whatever Jack was going to say doesn’t matter. Jack seems incapable of understanding the gloom of death and the heavy weight of grief that permanently enshrouds the Hub – a more effective cloak the perception filter could ever be, horror drawing the eyes of the living effortlessly away. It isn’t that Jack is unfamiliar with death – if anything, he and Death are intimates, more closely entwined than any of the multitudes that have shared Jack’s bed and body. But for an immortal timetraveler, the notion of permanence is laughable. Somewhere out there, everyone Jack has ever loved is alive. Jack has never really, truly ever been left behind as those he loves best move on to land beyond his reach. Death is not forever for Jack.

For now, Ianto rises to follow forward in to the fray.He would like to believe he leaves death behind in the files. He knows better, but the comfortable lie is where Torchwood starts from.


End file.
